Basketball Hoopla

What I Did

Basketball Hoopla 1988-89 is a book I wrote as a 19-year old, primarily
during the month of September of 1988. Some of it is pretty good and
some of it is... well, I'm not proud of a few things. Most of the
research was done over a year or two, but some was done during that month
of writing.

The focus of the book was to answer research questions and just to
write a lot, I guess. It was fun and the methods I developed,
though somewhat primitive in this book, have lead to a lot of the
research I have done since and the scouting job I now have.

Among the things I talked about were
the effect of the three point shot on the game, how the game
has actually slowed down in the '80's (and '90's now), the effect
of bench play on winning, what forms the best types of offenses,
entirely new ways to evaluate player's scoring effectiveness, etc.
It's interesting to read about Charles Barkley
while he was in
Philadelphia, predicting a trade from there before it happened.
It's also interesting looking back on my opinion of Dennis Rodman
around the time of his Larry Bird
comments, before he established his
current persona. Hakeem was spelled Akeem.
Michael Jordan was
criticized for shooting too much. Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant,
Kevin Johnson, and Reggie Miller were rookies and
showing signs of
being pretty good. John Stockton
became the great point guard he is now.
Ahh, but some things never change -- The Clippers were still terrible.